She was found unconscious and unresponsive in her Manhattan apartment, according to the New York Police Department. She had recently undergone a liver transplant, according to The New York Post, which first reported the news. The cause of Trachtenberg’s death has not been confirmed, but the NYPD stated that no foul play is suspected.
The NYPD stated that officers responded to a 911 call on Wednesday, shortly after 8 a.m., and Trachtenberg was pronounced dead by emergency medical personnel who also responded to the scene.
Born in New York on October 11, 1985, Trachtenberg began acting at a young age. She was 3 years old when she started appearing in commercials, and shortly after that, she landed her first TV role in the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete, which aired in the mid-1990s. At the age of 10, she secured her first lead film role in 1996’s Harriet the Spy, where she played the titular aspiring detective alongside Rosie O’Donnell and J. Smith-Cameron.
However, Trachtenberg became widely known for her portrayal of Dawn Summers in the teen drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which aired on The WB in the early 2000s. She joined the popular series in its fifth season as the younger sister of Buffy Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, and remained on the show until its final season in 2003.
She found further success in another teen drama, playing the perpetual bad girl Georgina Sparks in Gossip Girl, which ran from 2007 to 2012. Trachtenberg’s character, a devious Manhattan socialite, regularly clashed with or blackmailed Blake Lively’s Serena van der Woodsen and Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf. She briefly reprised her role in HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot in 2022.
Her film roles include 2004’s Eurotrip, the teen comedy that popularized the song Scotty Doesn’t Know, and 2005’s Ice Princess, a movie about a nerdy high schooler passionate about figure skating. She also appeared in the 2009 film 17 Again alongside Zac Efron and Matthew Perry, as well as in episodes of TV series such as Law & Order, Clarissa Explains It All, All My Children, Six Feet Under, and Weeds.
